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Click on the interactive tax chart link to the right of the page. It gives you a pie chart for your tax level.

FYI - over $0.40 of every tax dollar goes to the military. Far and away the largest single slice of the pie.

FYI, in pimping that 40% figure you're putting an awful lot of faith in a piechart that was bought and paid for by a gaggle of smelly hippies and malcontents who'd rather all that military money be given to them so they don't have to go out and get a real job:

ACORN
AFSCME
American Friends Service Committee
Assín of Farmworkers Opportunity Programs
Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation
Center on Budget and Public
Cities for Peace
Code Pink
Economists for Peace and Security
Hip Hop Caucus (I often catch myself thinking, "hmmm, I wonder where the Hip Hop Caucus stands on US fiscal policy?")
MoveOn.org
NAACP
National Organizersí Alliance (gee, a whole alliance of future Obamas)
Peace Action
People for the American Way
Project on Defense Alternatives
United for Peace and Justice
US Labor Against the War
War Resisters League

Wow, imagine that...Code Pink and United for Peace and Justice paid for a pie chart that says we spend too much money on national defense.

Henry V is talking about how our income tax dollars are spent, and his numbers are correct, despite the fact that you don't like the group that compiled the data.

The typical response to these numbers is to say that defense spending is around 20% of the Federal Budget. This is also true. But, the federal budget is made up of more than our income tax dollars --it includes Social Security and Medicare, which are funded (or at least is supposed to be) by a specific earmark. We also have been funding a good chunk of our budget for the past 8 years by borrowing money. (And, of course, the same party that is obstructing the stimulus bill borrowed and spent 3-4 TRILLION dollars when the economy was chugging along and we should been paying DOWN the federal debt.)

That 20% number also does not include things like paying the debt on previous military expenditures, and Veterans Benefits, which arguably are part of defense spending, and will be a HUGE burden moing forward given all the disabled vets coming out of Iraq, and the massive debt financing that we used to pay for the war (MUCH more than the cost of the stimulus bill)

The stimulus bill is actually quite a bit less money than the Repubs added to the national debt over the past 8 years.

And it only took them THREE WEEKS to come up with that amount...imagine what they'll spend over the next four years. Gonna make Bush 43's eight years look like a time of austerity in comparison.......

But the fact that the Repubs spent like drunken sailors when times were good doesn't mean that we should NOT be spending now.

Sound economic policy says you spend and accumulate debt when times are bad, and you pay off debt when times are good.

The Congressional Republicans' position is apparently the exact opposite of sound economic policy.

We'll see in short order how the Dem's congressional minority views "sound economic policy" once the money starts flowing. Look for the cash junkies to need additional fixes that will rival any crack addict.........

And it only took them THREE WEEKS to come up with that amount...imagine what they'll spend over the next four years. Gonna make Bush 43's eight years look like a time of austerity in comparison.......

We'll see in short order how the Dem's congressional minority views "sound economic policy" once the money starts flowing. Look for the cash junkies to need additional fixes that will rival any crack addict.........

kg

Actually, in the same time period in his first term, Bush introduced bills for tax cuts costing $1.8 trillion and pushed them through even as it became clear that the "surplus" was disappearing in the face of recession. His justification was that a stimulus was needed. The price tag was kept down to $1.8 trillion by proposing that all the cuts would expire and that taxes would go back to pre-cut levels in 2010. Of, from the beginning, the assumption was that the cuts would be extended because no one would be willing to see taxes increase no matter how it affected the economy. As things evolved, the bulk of the cuts kicked in after the short-lived recession had ended and the cuts were continued despite a growing war-driven deficit. This contributed to over-heating of the economy and helped to lay the framework for the current collapse. Will those who are now belatedly concerned about deficits argue to allow the tax cuts to expire rathern than incur the additional trillions of dollars of new dificits that will be created by extending them?

The advantage of the stimulus bill is that the projects receiving the funds are non-recurring. However, the risk that the same spending attitude will be repeated as politicians become addicted to easy cash is real. I hope the admninistration will have the intestinal fortitude to begin generating surpluses to pay down debt once the economic crisis begins to fade.

I hope the admninistration will have the intestinal fortitude to begin generating surpluses to pay down debt once the economic crisis begins to fade.

Begins to fade? We haven't seen the worse of the banking/financial system yet. Heck, our gooberment doesn't even know what happen to the $700, 000, 000.00 we used to bail out the credit markets! That was only two months ago. Did the automakers ever get thier share of the payoff? These are the same people, different administration, asking us to rush a TRILLION DOLLARS through and we have no time to discuss it! WE ARE BEING SWINDLED PEOPLE!!! And, they are going to ask for more.

Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery. Calvin Coolidge